Meeting 51 - February 2017

The Search for E.T. ~ William Joyce

William's talk summarizes the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (or SETI) attempts that have been made to search for intelligent life via radio signals of extra-terrestrial origin, and how such searches have been informed by astronomical considerations and the use of the Drake formula. Then the implications of the results to date are explored, including the Fermi Paradox and various suggested solutions to this, including Galactic colonization. Finally a possible glimpse of the future is presented speculating about interstellar travel.

NASA’s new sunshade ~ Simon Allen

The New Worlds Mission is a proposed project comprising a large occulter in space designed to block the light of nearby stars in order to observe their orbiting exoplanets. The observations could be taken with an existing space telescope, possibly the James Webb Space Telescope when it launches, or a dedicated visible light optical telescope optimally designed for the task of finding exoplanets

Predicting the Future: Life and Times of KIC 9832227 ~ David Pulley

KIC 9832227 is a contact binary star system in the constellation of Cygnus, located about 1800 light-years away. It is also identified as an eclipsing binary with a periodicity of almost 11 hours. A merger, producing a luminous red nova, is predicted to be visible to the naked eye, reaching magnitude 2, for a few weeks between September 2021 and September 2022.